AMERICA’S CUP UPDATE : NOTEBOOK : Dickson Enjoying This Cup More Than Fremantle Version

Nippon skipper Chris Dickson, who sailed New Zealand’s fiberglass 12-meter at Fremantle in 1986-87, will open the Louis Vuitton Cup challenger semifinals against his former team today. He said he has found this experience more enjoyable than the one in Australia.

“I’m not sure how much fun the guys over the bridge (in Coronado) are having,” he said.

He said he did not enjoy ‘86-87, although New Zealand reached the challenger finals before losing to Dennis Conner, 4-1.

“I certainly didn’t. It was made to be an uncomfortable place.”

Dickson spoke of “management problems” and “ego problems.”

But he said he harbors no hard feelings.

“Long, long past that,” he said.

To the surprise of many, Dickson, the top-ranked match-racing skipper in the world, has not been handicapped by sailing with seven in a crew of 16 that had never sailed before joining the program three years ago.

“The most important thing to me is attitude,” Dickson said. “I’d rather have someone with a good attitude who had never sailed before than someone with all the experience in the world who doesn’t fit into the boat.”

San Diego is no Fremantle.

When asked how this regatta compares, at this point, to the races at Fremantle in 1987, CORC Chairman Stan Reid oozed optimism in respect to the challenger races.

“I suppose all I can really say is it’s more exciting,” he said. “I think we don’t have the consistent conditions, we have inconsistent conditions, and you can make what you like of that.”

What he made of it was some hot competition that might not be resolved until the last day of the round.

“The conditions add some spice to the competition,” he said. “On the challengers’ side the boats are, perhaps, more even. The round-robin format is more interesting than a knockout type semifinal competition, and makes for much better racing. I suspect you’ll be hanging on by your toenails till the last day. I think the results of the last day’s races can certainly have an effect on who you see in the America’s Cup.”

Greg Prussia drew the short stick Saturday.

When Stars & Stripes collected kelp on its rudder on the last windward leg of its race with America 3’s Kanza, mastman John Barnitt first tried leaning over the side to knock it off with a 15-foot carbon-fiber stick carried on board for that purpose.

But all Barnitt did was break the stick, leaving a four-foot stub.

So Prussia was summoned from the foredeck and, with navigator Lexi Gahagen holding him steady, went dangling over the side in his harness. People around the world, including Prussia’s mother in San Francisco, watched on television.

“I just called her,” Prussia said later. “She said she couldn’t stand to watch.

“It was quite a long time, I was definitely getting wet, and I was really too tired. But I got it off--then, as Lexi was trying to pull me up, we got another piece.”

Prussia, 29, got that off, too.

“I’m too old to be doing this,” he said.

With the competition becoming more intense and interest picking up, Saturday’s race drew the largest spectator fleet to date, and the sailors didn’t appreciate some of the attention.

“The spectator boats were way too close,” Dennis Conner said, “almost rude at some points, affecting the racing. It didn’t leave me a lot of options on which way to go on the (upwind legs). So were the helicopters. There were a number of downdrafts.”

Kanza navigator By Baldridge agreed.

“Another thing about the spectator fleet is that in the lighter wind, like it was today, our (sailing) angles coming out of the bottom mark are much wider than the race management aniticipated. We’re tacking through 110 degrees or better, and they looked at the course as being a 90-degree triangle.”

In light winds, Baldridge meant, the course becomes flatter, and spectator boats need to be kept farther back.

Il Moro di Venezia skipper Paul Cayard: “I predict Guzzini to win the defender trials.”

Guzzini is America 3’s notorious spy boat.